time... just another formula for inZANIty

what is time?

a question i've asked a hundred times....
to myself...
to my parents...
to my teachers...
to the sky...

i hear myself saying quite often "Has it really been _____ long since i _____?"

a rhetorical question with no short answer.

Einstein said that time only exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once.

Einsten was a Pantheist.


Has it really been 3 months since the last time we spoke?
Has it really been 10 years since the summer before my senior year in high school?
Has it really been 2 hours since i've been sitting here staring at the waves in a trance?
Has it really been so long since i've read Keruoac's 'On the Road'?

I love this book.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is in this book.

"The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to talk. Mad to live. Mad to be saved. Derisous of everything. Who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the sky. And in the center you see the blue centerlight pop and everyone goes Ahhhhh."

But as i read On the Road again (not to be confused with Willie Nelson's On The Road Again, which should be the soundtrack).... i find so many quotes i love and cherish and roll over and must write down.

I keep a book of quotes... things said in conversations, books, movies or song lyrics that tickle the inside of my rib cage.

"The madness of Dean has blossomed into a weird flower."

I mean... how GOOD is that?

I just love words when they slide together in a particularly tantilizing way...
SO i record it.
I lock it in time, because i will forget it existsted when the next arrives.

i stay in the moment and get pulled from one moment straight into the next, riding a string of words that have collapsed together and taken me away from the last.
I fall in love with it. consumed, infautated, obsessed... for five minutes.
and then i somehow forget it existed.
always.
with pretty much everything.

but i live like my father does and i fall in love 100 times a day.
with everything and everyone.


Today I sat next to my favorite palm tree on the island.
I know... I know... i am not supposed to sit next to coconut trees because they can fall and knock you out.
But i chanted.

"Lokah samastha sukhino bhavantu" - May the entire world know love and peace.

... somehow i believe that if i am chanting, nature won't possibly hurt me.
I chant when i'm paddling around the island and get scared of sharks too.
I think to myself
'well... there is no way that the story would go "and then as i was blessing the sea, a shark bit me."... nope. no way."

That's my irrational rationale and i'm sticking to it.

Anyways - i sat under this tree.
Its the same tree i gave massages underneath last week sometime.
I had set up the massage table dressed in cabernet colored cotton right beside the turquoise waves...
and i did some magical body work.

I know this (that it was magical) because 3 of the 6 men were changed. Altered.
I can't explain it and i'm honestly not sharing this to toot my own horn.
Sometimes i just stare out into the universe and my hands do stuff... the same way when i am teaching yoga and words spill out and i think to myself "who thought THAT up!?"
It's like I trance out and all this wonderful energy comes pouring through me.

I gotta figure out how to put a floor on this vessel and be a container of this good stuff for myself.

But ya... people say strangely often, unrelated and unprovoked, after body work from me that "the colors look brighter"

Every new person that says this floors me.

So... apparently i know how to do this.

This does not suck.

Ha. that was such a josh hogan way of thinking!

So anyways this tree is extremely awesome and magical and i love it...

I sat beneath it and i pondered and i chanted.

I tried to climb it but i couldn't. John E did for us and sent down coconuts.

Me & Haven (our new favorite) who is staying in Bungalow 2 and really should move here because he just belongs... well, we sat under that tree drawing in the sand and talking about the cosmos, metaphysics and the power of peace, prayer & surrender.

Ya... i told you. HE belongs here. He speaks our language and his heart beats at the tempo of this island. He sees art in driftwood and sees more then a wave to surf on when he looks out at the sea.



We created moon salutations the other night with our ankles in the night sea facing towards the enormous orange moon that seemed to be clutched by a claw of black shadowy clouds.

I felt a drop and my instinctive thought was that it must be ink from the black sky above us that was dripping on me.

the stars that night seemed to melt in an arc over the island and one jumped out and skipped across the ink black night just as i said the words

"the journey is the gift... the prize is the path..."
...powerful, timeless words a fire essence spirit guide shared with me back in Santa Monica in my apartment... which OH MY GOD... was that REALLY 2 years ago? jeez.

these words....
these words that still make my skin goosebump and stars fall out of the sky like a sighing, fainting, southern belle seeing a handsome man that takes her breath away... shooting stars more like swooning stars.

Towards the start of "On The Road" crazy-ass Dean and Carlo have a standing agreement. A date every night to sit on a bed crossed-legged and look straight at eachother and talk about abstract ideas and bizarrities.

"We're trying to communicate with absolute honesty and absolute completeness, everything that's on our minds."

I love this.

In Venice Beach, i have spent many nights doing exactly this.

One susch night that comes to mind often, was at the LOVE compound on Westminster, where a bunch of my most beautiful friends live.... and i found myself lessentially living in the month before i left for Asia.

Aaron Glass, Amber & I sat on the back on Native American inspired blankets from the OM home.... A fire was taking its last breaths as we lay back, our heads resting on the soft wood planks i sat on so many times.

We talked beneath that blanket of Californian stars until they began to fade and dawn broke above us.

This was not unusual in Venice.... watching the stars fade and the sun rise as words continued to spill out into the morning air.

Here on this island i watch the sunrise in silence, emerging from my sleep where i danced alone with my imagination for a solid sleep of 7 or 8 hours.

But what does time do in sleep?
Is it faster or slower?
Is there evolution in dreams?
Or is this "reality" all just a waking dream anyways?


When i start to have thoughts like this, i feel like everything is about to start breaking open... I feel my breath pool a little deeper in my lungs and the clouds seem to separate overhead like a cotton ball being stretched out finely across the sky.
It ALWAYS does this.
breaks apart like that when i think like this.
On days when my thoughts and my breath go deep...
I always look up to see the broken, thin layer of clouds spread out and i try to take a snapshot, but of course my i-thing is broken...

(p.s. point to ponder - the word aWan - means clouds... the word aMan means safety.... not far off... especially when you think about the fact that coral releases an endorpphine or something into the air to create a CLOUD layer above the reef to keep it SAFE from the strong sunlight. BAM.)

anyways.... I'm protesting the internet right now anyways... Ignoring the FOMO that i might be missing out on my emails or skype dates or god forbid someone were to post a hideous inappropriate photo i need to do damage control and prompty untag.

How long has it been since i have gone a day without opening a laptop?

It's been really nice.

I suggest trying it.

(this piece i wrote on a scrap of paper and plan to transcribe it later.)

i just did.

that was then.
this is now.
but when you read this this will be then that i wrote this.

please read the following poem i wrote last year (which was now, back then.)... i think it makes more sense of this time thing then i can right now (which is now back then, for you now)

aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

a formula for insanity
it's all coming undone in its perfectly imperfect chaos...
shaking loose the satin strings of attachment that bind us to one another.

the free falling, wild, flailing peace rips perfect seams through my spine...
and the agonizing burn warms my nearing hypothermic heart.

i dont ask that you stop or start, come or go, press or ease away...
just that you be exactly who you are...
and sit in the seat of your soul so i can sit in the seat of mine.

i will watch the leaves turn red...
and the sun go black with the smoke of a blazing forest fire.

i will watch the autumn come and pass me by again as i flutter down to an icy snow-covered hill.

my swollen eyes will gaze again at the glacier glowing blue in the moonlight...
among those that speak the language of love

and the days will get longer.

the yellow daffodiles will spring to life overnight to greet us with their crisp, spirit shaking essence...
as if to slap my rosy cheek and bring me back to the present moment.

i am not in a garden where swans dwindle and canopies of flowers hang over head.

that life is a life that was.

...but einstein said that "time only exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once."

so i cant help but wonder if i am still here...
or if i was going to be there...
or if i will be where i was...

and you wrote that then, but i say it now...

so my mind can't help but to spin circles like a kaleidoscope splattering confusing colorful shapes against the wall..
shapes that draw me in with their perfectly imperfect chaos.

and i realize that i have no choice but to sit in the bosom of this lotus flower...
and gaze towards the light in the sky...
and surrender
to not knowing.

surrender to the jumbled memories and dreams that morph you all together in this current backwards line i draw in the sand...

my breath will guide the falcon that floats above my left eye...
the falcon that will sweep my lifeless body through the air and drop me on a cliff i recognize from somewhere...
and i wont know whether to jump or fall until i arrive.

push comes to shove.

i felt sad today.
...again.
and both of my indo sisters cried with me.
i'm not sure why.
they both came to me and asked me "kenapa?"
"why?"
for some reason both times, once out front and once in the kitchen i welled up with tears.
why, what?
i don't know exactly what they were asking me with that word.
i assume they felt my energy or saw the sadness wiped across my eyeballs.

did it matter?

i was emotional... this was good.

i haven't been able to cry in such a long time.
i can tear up and my eyes will leak a few salty drops, but i haven't been able to fully cry in such a long time.

i think i am broken.


i practiced yoga and meditating under my favorite kamani tree this morning...
"pohonga" is what miwa, the new hostesseuse and i called it.
pohon means tree.
it's tree yoga.

i lay there after my sun salutations and hip openers and i thought about pushing.

most of us are born in the western world our mother screaming and sweating, beat red in the face... our father doing the lamaz breath and screaming back at the mother "PUSH PUSH!"... the doctor yelling over everything "OK, one more big push!" and then BAM we are in the world.
our lifetime begins.
the stopwatch clicks on and our first inhale is taken as our mother and father exhale out... sigh and collapse in a sweaty, bloody heap of joy.

most of us are born in a state of PUSH.

i have been focused for a long time on the proverbial push... and recognizing when pushing becomes shoving and it all becomes too much.
when there is shoving, there is resistance from one side.
a lack of ease.
DISease.

i have been anti-pushing for such a long time.
i don't believe we should go against a current or push back if the universe pushes you in a direction.

ironically i was born while my mother was under general anesthesia. she said she dreamt about bunnies and woke up with me in her arms.
it's a dangerous way to give birth, but under rare circumstances (like my mothers) - they will put the mother under.
send her to sleep.
into dreamland and perform a c-section and let the baby plop on out of her mommie's tummy, like i did.

there was no pushing when i entered the world.

as a teacher, i believe in the gentle encouragement like the little engine that could "i think i can... i think i can"... but never pushing into a state of discomfort.

this pacifist way of life has served me and allowed me to just go with the flow... but sometimes you watch things float on past you and it's a little sad.
it is maybe a little pathetic to just surrender and not put up any sort of a fight.
sometimes i will really want something but stay quiet and passive, and provided nobody else wants it too that is going to push past me... i will receive it.
but as long as there is a pusher, i will lose out somehow.
usually i just accept it.

i definitely don't want to fight.
and i don't want to be shoved.

but i think that a gentle push from someone i love can be a really positive thing and i have moved far away from that... i have positioned myself in a lifestyle where there is nobody to push me, but myself.
and i have somehow let myself flow into a state of being where i no longer have the energy to push myself and have gone deaf to my inner self's "i think i can" chant...

i am feeling needy for encouragement from others, especially as i begin this transition from the island and into my next chapter of traveling.

i emailed my dear friend Robin, in Venice this afternoon.
I told her a little about this realization and how much i miss the gentle push from our friends and reflection connections in Venice beach.

i am thirsty for the light of my teachers in venice that i love to drink in.
i am hungry for guidance and gentle reminders.
i am craving a mirror that gently pushes me.

that mirror mirror on the way that shows me what i love about myself.

I know that once i reunite with my people i will feel encouraged and start to feel more empowered and alive, but at the moment, i just feel a little depleted.

i sat up under the tree and pulled petals off a bright red hibiscus flower growing near by. i buried 5 petals in the sand, one by one, and placed a bulb from the kamani tree on top.
sending blessings to 5 people who came to mind and have been in my dreams often.
i don't know where this weird ritual came from, but i made it up and it felt right to do.

i just closed my eyes and let 5 faces of friends come to mind without thinking too much about it.

The fifth and final blessing was for someone who i don't speak to... and it pulled a great blanket of sadness over me.

wrapped in that emotion i walked back and sat on the steps looking out at the ocean i love so much, wishing i could cry.


yona walked up and sat next to me.
She said to me "when i hear you laugh, i laugh. when i see your tears, i have tears."

i hadn't had a tear yet at that point, but when she said that i felt a few run down my cheek as i smiled and shook my head.

she said she knows. and she dreams about me.
she said that sometimes she hates herself and knows i am the same.
she said she talked to her uncle about me (the medicine man in siberut) and said that she wants to take me there. i want to go.

we talked for a long time and the more things i thought of that made me sad, pulled this seemingly endless thread of sadness and kept drawing up more and more things that were coming out.

i needed to shake it off and stop pulling up this root that pulled up roots further down the path...
so i stood and i went for a mandi laut swim in the ocean and thought about kahlil gibran

"there must be something sacred in salt, for it is in our tears and it is in the sea."

i pulled a few tarot cards in the gudang while i was getting dressed and dried and then came up into the kitchen.

linda saw me walk into the kitchen
and popped up to sit on the counter next to where i was preparing my green salad.

she asked the same way yona had....
"kenapa?"

again i shook my head and smiled and felt a few tears run down my cheeks.

this time linda seemed to pull the thread from within her.
she started crying and telling me about her dreams.
about her father who is sick and her sister who is sick now too...
her sister is in the hospital on sumatra and her father is getting traditional healings up in the jungle village on siberut.

yona walked in as i was finishing making my salad and linda was still sitting on the counter watching me.

we all looked at each other and welled up with tears and group hugged.

maybe we all needed a little hug. a little tender love.

i miss love.

i never thought i would say that.

in my belief... in my deepest philosophy in life i think that everything is love.
and yet. i feel an absence of it here.
i feel a coldness lately... a hardness
and i don't understand.
mostly because it is 90 degrees every single day and the sand and the sea are both the texture of silk.

so i recognize that it is something inside of me.

i think that i am lacking warmth and love inside myself... FOR myself..
and that is why the universe is reflecting back these feelings.

and SO... today i chose to love myself.

i will go plant a hibiscus flower for me.
and recognize that my skin is something i really like about myself.
its really soft and cuddly and i appreciate it.

i think we should all find something we like about ourselves today.

because when push comes to shove, we are the only souls inside our skin.

we only have ourselves to depend on, to teach us and to love us.

so lets love us.

i think i can... i think i can...

INward

oh how i love life.
i love to live...
but like, really REALLY liiiive.

i love pain and sadness (only after the fact of course)... because it reminds me why life on the flip side of the coin, on the light side of this yin yang life is SO good.
so beautiful.

my pendulum swings wide.
this i know.

i always come back to this poem i wrote one time called "the quiet trampoline" and in it i said

"to reach that high, we'll dip this low and in the end its worth the comedown to darkness to fly beside the sun."

the comedown to darkness... or for me, it seems that its more like going blind.




maybe i over-sensitize (is that a word? i dont think so)... but thats what i think i do.
i DRINK in the colors, the sunlight, the love...
i feel like i bubble over with bliss and see life in twelve different paradigms at once.

where most people see a simple part of life, i see ten metaphors and deep symbolism... messages from the universe.

so, then when my pendulum swings, and i fall into a state of confusion and blindness, i literally lose my sight.
and being blind is scary.

i remember when i first got to this island (before the season started and when we were without guests)... we would turn the generator off at night.
on a new moon or a stormy night when the clouds cover the stars and moonlight... it it is darker then anything i have ever experienced.
we are MILES away from any streetlights or artificial light pollution. (a 10 hour ferry ride to padang to be exact) ...

holding my hand inches from my eyes i can remember straining and squinting... opening wide, and blurring my vision... trying to make out even the slightest shadow or shape. there was none.
i was so scared that first dark night.
the door to the bungalow i was playing house in was open to let the air in... and it let in an animal or two.
i heard something crawling across the floor and then nestling into a piece of plastic that the new pillow was wrapped in.
my imagination ran rampant...
my mind fluttered and flew and pictured a myriad of evil things that it could be. waiting to eat me.
i remember pondering about what part of my body would hurt the least to be eaten first.
i decided my face and neck would be the worst, so i hid my head under the pillow and sacrificed my legs and body to the open night air.
(there was just a mosquito net above me creating this thin netted boundary between me and the monster in my room.)
i was positive at one point that it was a komodo dragon.
i have never seen one, but i knew it was ugly and scary and spiny... and i imagined its eyes would light up bright red in front of my face, out of the pitch blackness right before it devoured me.

it turns out it was the cat.
his name is "kitty"...
he sleeps with me pretty much every night.
there are no komodo dragons here.

i found that out in the morning after the longest sleepless night counting the minutes until sunrise... begging the sky to start glowing and waiting in the pitch dark night.

i have learned to love the night here now and when the sun goes down instead of swallowing hard knowing that i was in for a night of mosquito bites and fear in the silence and darkness, i welcome the time when the jungle sighs and deep heavy breath of welcome. the opportunity to be out of the hot indonesian sun, to cool off and rest.
the stars paint themselves across the onyx colored canvas above us from horizon line to horizon line... a dome of twinkling lights.
even on the nights when its too dark to see them, i know they are there.

sometimes i wonder if the nights are actually just so dark because they have to counter the days here, where the sunlight literally bounces and the colors are so vibrant they seem totally surreal.
the perpetual contrast in life.

the cosmic illustration of me.
i live in technicolor and/or stark black darkness.

but it's WORTH the comedown to darkness... it's worth the blinded heart in order to fly so high and see so much beauty in life.




HOWEVER... i only just this morning began to see and realize that perhaps my pendulum needs to swing in and out, versus side to side looking outward.

because even in dreams we are watching fantasy and illusion unfold before our closed eyes... still though, we are looking to it... just the way we look out and see the world before our eyes in waking life.

i think i am being told to turn inward more. check in... INside... and take care of that child INside my heart.

i feel i have been witnessing so much.

constantly thinking of the upanishad "Aham Sakshahi" - "I am the eternal witness"

when i meditate i witness my breath... i watch my life force.

what i have not been doing is letting go of being the looker... being the watcher... the witness... and just BEING.

as i said... i always seem to go too far.
i take things to an extreme and then back-peddle the other way until i've hit the too far button on the other side.

i used to watch this happen often in my yoga practice. being too flexible and going too far. far too far because i didn't have the sensory "stop. that's enough." button in my body.



IN yoga class in Venice, my teachers would come by and correct me and two weeks later i would get the completely opposite correction, indicating that i just kept going too far. squaring my hips until i was over rotated and then find myself going back the other way until i was totally under rotated.

how do we deal with that?

how do we find the healthy balance in the middle when we are lacking proprioception... when it seems, we can't actually feel where we are in space at all?

if i can't feel my body, i can't know when i have gone too far with something.

similarly, when i have gone numb emotionally (as i have lately)... i cant tell when i have gone too far and hit a low.

i think the only way to find yourself and rediscover where you are standing in space... on earth... is to close your eyes and go within.

don't judge.
don't watch.
don't wait
don't even observe.
just be.

find the space between where your skin starts and where you begin and float there.

just be INside yourself.

when you open your eyes let the colors, the temperature of the air, the sights and smells and sounds around you... let them come IN to you.

remain INside and see if you can make decisions from that INside place.

maybe it's handing the decision making over to the child inside your heart... which seems crazy!

who would put decisions in a child's hands?

well... maybe we need to.

i think i do.

handing my heart to my inner child and letting her decide what i should do or be or think.

i think by trusting her wisdom in her innocence and youthful brilliance, she will evolve, she will grow and step into the role as decision maker & reactionary.

so... little girl inside my heart,
little girl with blonde piggies in your hair...
i love you.
thank you for being my navigator and capitain... guiding me through life.
thank you for reacting tenderly and lovingly... and recognizing that nothing is a big deal at the end of the day.
thank you for being able to cry, even when my eyes can't make tears.
thank you for remaining soft, even when the outside me hardens.
thank you for laughing and giggling.
thank you for getting embarrassed and being a dreamer and a hopeless romantic.

you're perfect just the way you are.



love,
me.

heroin.

heroin.

the needle and the damage done.

this song has been playing on repeat in my head for two days now.



this afternoon i was in tua pajet, the regency capitol of the mentawai islands. that makes it sound fancy... but really it's a tiny third world town nestled into the northwest corner of sipura island... just 90 nautical miles west of sumatera and just 2 degrees south of the equator, it is boiling hot in tua pajet all the time no matter what. there are no trees. just shops full of crap brought over on the ferry once a week.
i walked around town covered in my drapie cape to be respectful as always... buying random things, food,ping pong balls, and various requests from my friends back on the island... clove cigarettes, phone pulsa, etc.

i marched around doing my errands with my buddy/boat driver named Budi and listened to Neil Young play in my imagination. over and over again i heard it.

...every junkie's like a setting sun.

i decided on the boat on the way back over here to the island that i wanted to write about heroin.

I think if i wasn't so freaked out by needles back in the day, in my hay day of partying and being self destructive i might have sampled this drug... simply because i am curious and love to say yes to things, but i never did and i never will.

back in the day i didn't have the broad perspective i have now.
back then about 7 of my friends were alive.
back then, i made a choice not to try heroin, but so many people i know made a different choice.

so many people i knew.



so many movies, songs, poems, pieces of art born of, and created for and about this drug.

it must be great.
seriously... i'm sure it is.
really great.


the other day i was feeling a little lethargic and low energy so i googled Mitch Hedberg quotes, because he makes me laugh so hard.
i copy pasted this one on to the desktop of my computer because it made me laugh.
"I'm a heroine addict. I need to have sex with women who have saved someone's life."
Mitch Hedberg

which by the way...

why the FUCK is it called HEROIN?

there is NOTHING heroic about this stupid drug that keeps killing people in my life.

heroin addicts are all the same in the most cliche way.

i have known heroin addicts that are totally competent, together individuals... they work jobs and you'd never know they get loaded.
and i've known that ugly, gaunt, darkly circled eyes, steal your money and apologize later kind of junkie too.

they are all the same though.
they're essentially slaves to the golden brown... texture like sun.
it's like junkies fall in love with HERoin.
they have a seriously abusive destructive relationship with this thing that consumes them. decisions are made based around HERoin and somehow she always wills. she is their perpetual heroine.

but do they think she will save them?
do they really and truly not see that she is going to kill them instead?

EVERY junkie's like a setting sun.

we just sit and wait for it them to go down... because they always do.
the sun always sets... and the junkie always dies.

It breaks my heart to know that yet another family is burying their child, their brother, their cousin, their first love... because the junkie's love affair blinded them to the consequence. and they let this drug take over their life and take it away.

it's not just their life that gets shattered and taken away... it's the life of their mother, who will never be the same... and countless other lives, damaged, destroyed & darkened eternally.



I watched the needle
take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.






...i beg you to stop using.

moon shadows

tonight is the full moon.

i am lying on cabernet colored sheets that are draped over the driftwood bed that is in the bar (where i have been sleeping the last month or so)... tracy chapman is playing through the speakers (as she has the last 3 night or so)... and the nautilis shell lights are the only light beside the bright light of the full moon coming in through the wall-less walls and bouncing off the line of white water i can see over my left shoulder.

last night i walked around the island under the milky moonlight at low tide. my feet kissed this soft white sand for the millionth time.
i slowly cruised past familiar pieces of driftwood and new deliveries from the sea washed up on the beach.

i feel like i know every meter of the shore that circles this 12 hectare island.

i had the dude brood with me. (my new name for the 3 sydney girls that are staying here right now)... i felt myself smiling and nodding as they swirled around with arms out and head up to the almost full moon, sighing and awing at the beauty of it all.
the moon shadows danced around us at the speed of the spirit.
i don't even know what that means, but thats what it felt like.

i love this place.

we got back to the driftwood castle and drank vodka and danced and put on wigs and pretended to be the spice girls (minus ainsley - who we obviously included in our plan eventhough she was asleep. she was totally baby spice in spirit and i plan to photoshop her into the pictures).

when i woke up this morning i felt a little hungover and very heavy.
i felt thick, clogged, and stuck.

i don't really necessarily think it had everything to do with drinking... but obviously that had contributed to this feeling.

no... this was a feeling that has been slowly creeping over me for about a month.
it's something else.

i've realized that i need to love myself more. i have been seeing that i need to be better to myself and to this temple i live inside.

i went down to the water as soon as i woke up and felt this feeling of yuck... i brought papaya peels and rubbed them all over my skin as i sat in the wet sand and let the broken waves dance around me. i scrubbed my temple with papaya and sand and then i swam in the ocean.
an epic mandi laut (ocean shower).

after i came back up and had a sit and a stare out at the horizon, and read a few emails i realized that i have been feeling a lot of fear lately. various physical things that i will be seeing a doctor about as soon as i get back into the real world... and also just this overwhelming sense of being lost without a teacher.

it's funny because tonight i definitely sat around this bonfire we made on the beach under the full moon tonight. my toes digging into the sand, my fingers fiddling with the pieces of wood i was stripping and throwing into the fire as ainsley sang to us and played guitar. her songs have become some of my favorite songs i know. she's amazing and her words are always so meaningful to me. next to her was johnny, who really is one of my gurus. this kind, loving, patient artist that i aspire to be even just a little like. on the other side of the driftwood kingdom king & queen was yona, my teacher... she teaches me indonesian, mentawai, traditional sibulgungan remedy healings, and is just a badass. then i saw these aussie chicks who i love and who i am getting to love more every day. they are so honest and real and hilarious. i feel like we all have a lot in common.

wait a minute.

i am surrounded by teachers.
the thing that is missing is my faith in myself as a student.

i'm not sure where this came from.

i am so confident when i am teaching, and yet as a student i second guess myself... in everything. i just want to be lead. i don't want to teach myself.
... i guess this is a pretty normal thing.
pretty human.

i don't mind helping and guiding others, but then i want to be helped and guided too.

so i am open for opinions... for guidance... for things that you might think i could use.
zani.roberts@gmail.com :)

my friend tawney sent me this epic email after i had written her a long gushy emotional email... telling her how i was feeling like i was living i a dream, and unable to identify what i was creating. her email was chock a block full of wisdom and these awesome quotes.

one that stood out was:
“Reality is that part of the imagination we all agree on"

made me think of my year at the OM hOMe... and how we created so much.
venice is good at that.

i remembered what it was like to spend time looking inward.
having my teachers and guides send me on this journey inside myself... and then i would share it with my friends...
"he who looks outside dreams, he who looks inside awakens."
we were all waking up and then i bailed and came to dreamland.
which - there is nothing wrong with living in a fantasy. in fact, its pretty radical... but i think my body is beginning to atrophy lying around sleeping as my mind dreams this whole thing into reality... or something like that.

here on the island, i have been spending so much time looking out. taking it all in... that i haven't really seen what's going on with the intake. what's going on with me. and i havent been loving myself nearly enough.

so i am going to give myself a mandi laut more often.
i am going to connect my third eye with the floor and let that be my yoga practice if thats all i can muster the energy to do.
and i am going to clean my blood.

yona told me today that she thought i had "darah kotor" - dirty blood.
she said she is getting me this vegetable called kangkung that i guess it means 'opium spinach" from the village and i will eat that with black tea and ginger and honey and drink coconuts and clean my blood... and then she said she is going to squeeze the water out of some kind of tree bark and use that as a healing on my skin while i do this blood cleansing.

she thinks it will make me better.

it makes me think a lot about what that means.
what does blood represent?

i always think of the family unit when i think of what blood means.
i think of your keluraga "family" as your blood.

in mexico they say SANGRE DE MI SANGRE. "blood of my blood"

the word keluarga is intersting because "keluar" means exit or come out of....
so you literally come out of your family.

also ke - means to go
and luar - means beyond

so maybe what is dirty... what is sick and aching inside of me has something to do with my inability to go beyond.
i am stuck.
here... away from my family.

in my yoga practice... my meditation practice... i am not pushing myself at all.
i am not feeling inspired or motivated.

maybe this blood cleanse will help wake me up from my waking dream and get my motivated somehow.
remind me that i am much closer to my family then i think i am.
all i have to do is close my eyes and i am with them.
--------------------------

i fell asleep after i wrote that.
i slept solidly and woke up around 6am with my arms above my head... i looked to my left and saw a mosquito drinking my dirty blood.

i smiled and said "go ahead and take it."

i felt ready to cleanse today.

i sat down with my indonesian book and decided to GO FURTHER... learn something new in indonesian that i didn't know before.

i thought... maybe i will paddle across to the other island today as i haven't done that.

i opened my computer and found an email that floored me.
shook me to my core.

and now i am numb.

my friend devin's tragic death a year and a half ago shook me so violently that my life began to unravel...
i left the hospital where her body was laying on life support.
her brother mike, my friend, was collapsed in the corner in these jeans that were covered in holes and rips.
i remember those jeans, because that's how everyone felt.
ripped open.
he sat on the cold linolium floor of the ICU with his feet flat and his knees bent and his head buried in between his knees.
i'll never forget that night.
i remember where everyone was. what everyone was doing.
i remember holding shaunnah (devin & mike's mom) and feeling her fragile shell shaking in my arms.
i remember thinking in that moment how fragile we all are.
how fragile life is.
... and how we could be gone tomorrow.

my marriage began to collapse in the hospital that night.

i recognized that night that i had one life to live in this body and it was time to start living for me... doing what i needed and not waiting for anyone else, which ultimately meant walking alone and parting ways with my husband.

that realization made me stronger... brighter.
i was able to hold space for devin's family having surrendered the space my marriage was consuming in my life.
i remember feeling stable, even though i was spinning.
and the whole world went a little hazy.
it stayed hazy for a solid year... like there was a think layer of smog, though i continued to hold space for my friends and for devin's family.

we had a series of memorials and marches, and would find one another down by devin's tree often. devin's brother mike never seemed to recover from the pain. i don't think anyone could, but mike was hit especially hard. every time i saw him his eyes were vacant. A few times we sat on the steps next to the tree and talked and he would share that he was doing better.
better then what i would think?
i heard him crying out for help.
he desperately needed companionship and friends around him, but everyone needed all the strength they could muster just so their own knees wouldn't buckle.


jessica and i spent devin's birthday (march 1st) at her tree... dancing around at 11:11... i left to move to indonesia the next day.
we have tattoos on our wrists that have a swedish fish for devin and 11:11 on either side reminding us of angels and to breathe and laugh.
jessica and i held each other up after devin died.
we would run away to her porch in the marina.
we called it the greenhouse.
we could lock ourselves inside and feed one another and grow inside this glassed in box we so badly needed.
we'd put our feet up on the railing and watch the boats for hours... days... weeks...
we laughed so much.
it was our medicine.
we painted a canvas sign that said R.I.P. Devin and strung it from the railing on the porch.
it had swedish fish on it too... just like our tatoos.

mike got a heart on his arm for devin. I think it was a heart that she had drawn on a book. i remember him proudly showing it to me at her funeral, when he told stories about being devin's brother.

one story that will always stand out to me was the one where they were in the tree in front of their house. and they made parachutes and he made devin jump out first and devin being devin was all over it and jumped out of the tree and landed on the grass, most likely breaking a bone or two. she was a badass.
i wonder if he jumped out after her or learned from her jump and took the easy way down?

mike died yesterday of a drug overdose.
i woke up to this email from jessica. just 6 words.

mike petelski died this morning. OD.

i can't even feel what this feels like because i am numb.
i am numb because i can't even begin to empathize or feel what their mother, shaunnah must feel right now.

her blood must be drained.

her family.

keluarga...

the two children that came OUT from her... that were supposed to go further... live beyond her... they are both dead now.
gone.

she has no more children alive.

my heart is so sad i don't know what to say or do.

so sad.

it puts EVERYTHING in perspective as it always does.

i was so stressed out that my blood was dirty.
meanwhile my friend's blood was running cold... because he injected poison into his bloodstream.
and i can imagine the blood was draining out of shaunnah's face.
i imagine she went white...
i imagine she is unable to stand.

and i feel so far away.

over here stressed out because i don't have a yoga teacher.

i'm alive.

i guess i somehow forgot to be grateful for that.

upside down

up
side
down

a few nights ago goddess tawney skyped me before she had read that last blog.
i had been thinking about her that night as i sat under the mozzie net and wrote that entry... she must have felt that her energy had arrived to me.
i LOVE cosmic connectedness. it rocks.
she sent me a link for a video called hammock enlightenment...

it took a day or so to buffer and then played to me just as i needed it.

i wrote down parts that i loved:

"that deep mystical love thats inside of all of us... that every single one of us has access to but we need to keep it central to our idea as a culture and that needs to be in mind inside of all of us.

what is love?
where does it come from?
and how does so much of it fit inside one small body?

love blurs the line between where you end and where someone else begins."


it made me think...

slowing down is pivitol.

me and my friend nick "wallaki" wrote a song about slowing down when i first got here.
i think it was a message i needed to teach so i could hear it myself. (much like all the lessons i teach... to myself)
As a firey zani-go kinda girl i know that i need to do this often.
more often then often.

ya kow how in life you hear stuff a lot? we have buzz words that ring to us... the thing that causes us to say "ya... i've heard that."
i always heard 'fire' and 'intense' and 'passion' when people described me...
and for the first time in my life, i am hearing people describe me as 'relaxed' and 'mellow' which is new for me.

i think that i have chemically changed... i have begun to sink into my soul and love even more then ever.

and i think its because i have slowed down significantly.

i think this is the point of the "vacation" for many.
i think this is the reason that guests come to stay at this island - Togat Nusa Retreat - the ultimate chemically altering, relaxing paradise on earth...

they come here to feel this slow pace... this love... this relaxed sense of unity and family and acceptance of all.

nothing is a big deal here


it reminds me back to the days of my yoga teacher training with annie carpenter.
she is this incredible teacher... obsessed with anatomy, and placement (she was a dancer too)... and yet, would tell us to let go of it all...
she'd say "it's only yoga" and "if you're not enjoying it... why are you doing it?"

i think this is something we could all live by in every mOMent in our lives...

if you are not operating in a state of love... if you are not feeling that expansive joy... then maybe its time to do something else.

a lot of times i fall out... i feel fear and frustration and want to scream or throw my computer in the ocean (like yesterday)... but if you can't change the situation... start a new project or distract yourself... or just consciously flip the switch... then it's time to make a big change.

Pratipaksha Bhavanam - this yogic idea of turning lemons to lemonade.

flip it upside down.


for me - i literally need to do a headstand and flip myself upside down.
(Mitch Hedgeberg says "I wear a necklace, cause I wanna know when I'm upside down.")

being flipped upside down gives me a perspective i need... and somehow it reminds me that everything can be turned on its head... lemonade can be made from ANY lemon... and it's OK to fall out.
it's okay to fall out of the love... the unity place and into frustration.
it's okay to fall out of a handstand and onto the ground.

we're human.

yesterday was a stormy day.
usually i really love a stormy day...
especially here on the island, i think its such a nice change of pace to stay inside... to cuddle up and watch a movie as the rain comes down on all sides of us in the driftwood castle.
i taught a yoga class to some guests and then had the idea to turn the uma into a movie theatre like birdie and i used to do...
pull the beds over... set up a laptop plugged into the surround sound speakers... make popcorn and just veg out... weather the storm.

buuut of course the cheap bali knock off DVD got stuck in my disc drive... which literally drives me CRAZY.
this made my computer totally die in bali a few months ago and i nearly had a mental breakdown. (a part of my personality i am working on)...

so there i am yesterday with the blood in my face, and my head throbbing from it... and im holding two butter knives prying open the disk drive about to drop my laptop on its head.
and Ainsley, the driftwood kingdom queen and my mermaid sister guru... came and just gently picked my computer up from me... confiscated it and walked away.

okay... okay... i realized.

i needed to calm down.

i needed to find that place of love... the expansion place, versus this skull crushing frustration place.

what would my mother tell me to do?

create.

i walked down the stairs and out into the rain... marching towards the gudang... stopping for 5 minutes to hold a handstand in the sand under the palm trees. i came down, let the blood drain down and pull with it my itchy, irritation...
releasing it into the earth just like the raindrops that were being abosorbed and swallowed up by the ground...
i found some pastels and paper and marched back up the stairs and said to the girls... okay y'all... let's collabcreate!

we started making collaborative mandalART like david block and i did for 7 hours straight on our way to burning man 2 years ago in the RV. (little did we know... we were doing exactly what burning man would be. --taking turns drawing our spirit onto a canvas.)

we sat there for four hours yesterday, drawing together on a canvas.
it was beautiful.

that piece of art (and direct illustration of pratipaksha bhavanam) is now hanging behind the bar as i write this.

it's funny, because the way that i saw it once we finished coloring in the whole page... is directly upside down from the way it is hung in the bar... its as though that piece of art is standing on its head. flipping the situation around as always.

the piece reminds me so much of a drawing i sat and created while tawney was healing post-surgery after our car accident before i left to come out here.
although i was the only one drawing, all the spirits that came through and played music for us and brought their gifts of love and light... josh hogan, clayton joseph scott, lukas nelson, avasa & matty love, the makepeace brothers, and others...

they were all drawing on this piece of art.
as they brought their gifts to us, i was infused by it and drew a collaborative drawing in the living room of the love compound... and i believe it might still be there.

i love this lesson.

i illustrated the message incase you need a visual.

dari mana?

dari mana

in indonesia, people always ask you "dari mana?" - meaning "from where?"...
when getting to know you, the first most important question is "dari mana" meaning "where are you from, originally?"
and they seem to always want to know "where are you coming from" when you see them again in passing.

my goddess sister Liz pointed this out to me about a month ago and i have been so conscious of it since then. noticing how the indos always want to know where you have just come from... maybe they want an explanation for the current state of your spirit.

what have you just absorbed?
what have you just seen?
what did you just walk through?


i found myself out in the water today having a salt cleanse... paddling around on a surf board "Running awayve" from the surfing part of the surfing... consciously choosing to just duck dive and cruise... hang out in the lineup with my friends and being in the water, but not worry about catching waves and putting myself through the usual anxiety it creates for me.

Today was not the day for that. Today i cruised. And i LOVED every mOMent.

Today i was having conversations with the energy in the tides...
i whispered to the swell i felt building and filling underneath me as it formed waves my friends rode.
i watched the back of the turquoise moving mountain of sea water errupt in front of me spraying arcs into the air.. the silhouettes of my friends just visible through the back.

i whispered to the waves "dari mana?"
"where have you come from?"

i imagined three days ago, my californian goddess sister Tawney out in the surf at county line in malibu, sitting in the lineup... her fingertips brushing the top of the ripples rolling across the pacfic ocean water... i pictured her beautiful, loving, warm divine spirit and could visualize her sending her energy, her vibe into the vibration of the ocean...
i saw that energy flowing out to sea... towards catalina... and then evaporating into the sky and floating in a cloud towards Hawaii...
I saw a storm sending sheets of rain into the ocean and across the palm tree brothers and sisters to those on this island...
and i saw the birth of this swell that i felt underneath me.

i saw the hiccup... the tiny bump that rain storm created and watched it dance through the seas, past sharks and sea urchins.... coral reefs and underwater caves... under the sun, under the moon, under the stars... dancing in the starlight.

and then here it was.

this healing, cleansing energy i was bathing in... after its journey from Tawney's fingertips, it arrived under me... around me... within me.


A dugout canoe, carved from a tree that undoubtedly grew on a neighboring island... came into my line of sight... far out towards the horizon... i could make out a little triangle straw hat and that shape of the dugout canoe cruising along the sea, as i sat on my surfboard cruising above the reef.

"dari mana?" i asked him, whispering in his direction from my salty lips into the wind blowing out towards him.

where had he just come from?
he looked so far away from any location or destination.
he looked like he was just simply cruising...
i suddenly had the urge to paddle out to him and ask him where he was from.
i wanted to know where the tree came from that his boat was carved out of.
i wanted to know where he was born and where his hat came from.

but a huge freak wave came and jolted me from my daydream to the sounds of my aussie girlfriends screaming "paddle zani! paddle!"

it passed. scary things always pass in life.

i was calm again... floating... cruising... soaking in deep water and even deeper thought...

i saw the moon rising in the distance as the sun began to yawn and considering setting for the evening.

it was just a shimmer shadow of the moon... a silhouette similar to the silhouette of a surfer from behind a wave.
i thought about how when you are half asleep, just waking up and it seems you can be present in the room and also in the dream... one foot in, and one foot out... it's hazy, but you can hear noise in both worlds.


i remember when my best friend jessica's nana died... we were talking to her and knew she could hear us, but she was also standing in the wings about to make her entrance onto the stage of the afterlife. she was definitely in both worlds and didn't want to let go and fully commit to either for a long time until the family took her hearing aids out and she finally stopped hearing our voices in this life and let herself fall into the afterlife only... guided to thy perfect light.

jessica studied gerentology in college and i have found more and more, how amazing it is to talk to elderly people. ask them where THEY have come from. their stories always blow me away. jessica's grandmother, neva ptterson was no exception. she led such a phenomenal life and i feel so blessed to have spent so much time with her in this life...

my feet dangling, my heart turned upwards toward this silhouette of a rising moon, and i imagined the moon still hanging in a black sky above friends in california, as it simultaneously began to appear in our blue-ish gray sky above the mentwai islands this late afternoon.

i wanted to ask the moon where it came from.
i wanted it to tell me stories about last night in venice.
i wanted to live vicariously through the moon.

mother moon - who last night was lucky enough to light up the venice night... shine her wisdom to my friends, and watch as they danced their love spirit unity dance on the streets of Los Angeles... hugging eachother and gazing into one another's twinkling eyes and marvelling in the magic swirling and twisting and twirling around them.

and then i realized...

i KNOW where the moon just came from because i was once there.

and i know where that fisherman wearing his traingle hat came from, because aaron glass told me.

aaron glass and i are going to be in india in a few months.
i love this man.
he emanates love, compassion, and joy.
and his music sings to my heart strings.

he sent me his new album and told me i would be the first to receive it... because he was the first to ever read the book i am writing.
i handed the manuscript over to him the first night we met in santa cruz at the red house...
which was the night we started hatching our plan for india.

aaron sings in one song "you came from love... you were made in love... you are love."

of course.

i had wanted the moon to tell me where she had been, because i wanted to hear stories about my friends like aaron dancing in venice... making their music in unity.

but i have been there so i know what it is.
and that music i already have. i already hear... and it gives me the messages i crave and the answers to the questions i seek.

the waves, the moon, the little man in his canoe, and the tree that was dugout to make his canoe... they all came from love.

just like me.

i am here because my parents chose to love. the made me with love... literally and metaphorically... and they chose to love me into existance...

so today i bathe in that love... and the love that my friend dip their fingers into the sea and send to me.

all of this.

its love.

...you can't spell EVOLVE without L-O-V-E

we went to the village today.

we have these badass chicks staying on the island right now. i have already made a plan to roadtrip with them from sydney to byron bay (where everyone and their mother keeps telling me i have to go...)
it's one of those things that i hear on repeat so many times... constantly... that i figure its a sign. a synchronicity.

i have a feeling that could be an awesome adventure.

so we went on a mini adventure today. the girls came in from surfing this morning and asked if i would take them over there. i LOVE that they were so into it. two of them are kindergarten teachers, so i get that spirit and energy in a big way. we brought my beautiful sister Linda (our chef), our new surf guide, and two Aussie guys who are guests right now came too.
i am doing my best to be loving to everyone, even those people that i see as bigoted and homophobic... the kind of people that JohnE, Ainz and i would put a hand symbol of an "E" with a cross through it on our forehead... meaning "non-evolver"

it seems as though there may be somewhat bit of an influx of "non-evolvers" in my life at the moment...

people who live in fear and say things that make me cringe a little and have to turn my head away.

in the past i have shrugged and turned away towards my circle of "evolver" friends and family and marveled at the brilliance of their light... ignoring those choosing to stand in the dark... but at times, especially on an island, i find i have no choice but to engage and be friendly and gently remind them that it's somewhat inappropriate to teach the children of the Mentawai village how to say "fucking homo"...

i do my best to love these types of people but i find it hard to stay lit and flow when among suffocating stifling, stiff energy.

so-- today, i chose to put on my energetic blinders and just hang with the badass girls and with the magnificent John and Ainz and Yona and my other beautiful ndonesian family members on the island.
They make my heart warm.
They make me feel loved and appreciated.
They make me feel like i belong.

Although, we ALL belong, don't we?

i mean - we are all on this earth, so i really think that it truly does "take all sorts"...

i think we all contribute a certain ingredient to the recipe of the universe... but i guess sometimes i like to keep my mashed potatoes away from my salad... on the other side of the plate. we can share the plate, but on that plate i want some separation.

ironically, tonight at dinner i made a potato salad out of last night's leftover mashed potatoes and chopped veggies.

so, maybe i am trying too hard to mix everything up... to be present in situations that turn me off. and maybe it's okay to just be OFF, and let the potatoes be potatoes and the salad be salad...

So, tonight... while a party ensued around me... the costumes came out... the punk rock music started blaring... the aussie voices screaming incredibly rude, misogynist comments across the room... and my heart started feeling like it wanted to close its eyes... to protect this sacred place, this island which is my place of worship... i snuck away and stared at the moon.
i found a seat away from the party...
this late night driftwood castle dance party that under normal circumstances i would be helping to conduct... to instigate... and dancing on the bar and demanding those people who hate tequila still take the shot and feel the burn... and closing my eyes as i held one hand around the pole and spun around the room.



but tonight, i chose to just not participate.

i let the party happen around me and i closed my eyes and i spun inward towards my heart.

Ainsley and i were talking earlier about how empowering it is to realize that you don't have to be friends with everyone. As much as you can be this multi-faceted diamond and connect with nearly everyone on at least one level or facet... its also okay to not connect, and surrender to being just on another page...

it's okay to just walk away and go lie on the beach and stare up at the stars.

Earlier today as we were returning from the village, my new Aussie chick friend Jules said to me "interesting that everywhere you go in the world, there is a place of worship."
its true.
it is quite amazing, that everyone... in every civilization and community and tribe, there is a house or place that people go to worship something or someone.

(there is a church in the village we visited today where my friends Cahn and Sue got married in March)

As i lay out on the sand on top of my purple pashmina, my arms above my head, my heart open to the crystal clear sky above me... i realized that this place is my church.
this is truly is my place of worship...

by the sea.
under the sky.
my breath in sync with the waves
my ears in tune with the sounds of the atmosphere.
my veins flowing like the tides
my spirit mirroring the galaxy

my god spot.

i think this is why i am vibe-ing so hard with the Pantheism...

PANTHEISM - * the unity of all that exists; * the regularity of all that happens; and * the identity of spirit and nature.

this is some kind of quiz that i took today... http://www.selectsmart.com/plus/select.php?url=Pantheists

my result was 100% Idealist Pantheism and 99% Dualist Pantheism.

i love this religion.

my church... here.
under the stars, by the sea.

and recognizing that i am one with the aussies wearing wigs and screaming "fahcking cant" over and over, back in the bar.

it takes us all to create this reality... but we get to chose where we go... what we do... and how we spend our time here on earth. We get to navigate our bodies through this existence...
and tonight i sat solo and stared at stars and smiled at my soul.

"a traveller am i... and a navigator... and every day i discover a new region of my soul."
-Kahlil Gibran.

so i decided to just 'rise above it' as my grandmother lebherz would say... and just love everyone regardless of their vibe.
because you can't spell EVOLVE without L-O-V-E

Spirits and Shells and Stars... oh my.

Wellllll....

not sure on where to start on this one.

i am so overwhlemed with magic right now i think there might be electric sparks flying around me... in fact, i'm sure there are.

10 minutes ago i watched a huge falling star streak across the black night sky as i was standing with my feet in the sand (where there is service - and several nautilis shells scattered about)... pacing back and forth talking a million miles a minute to my parents... telling them about my revelations today and the magic in nature.

really? the falling star?

okay, okay... let me back up.

i opened a book today about Indonesia as i sat in the kitchen, cross legged on top of the fridge nibbling on left over green papaya salad from the night before... as the chefs spun around me preparing lunch for the guests, occasionally throwing Beaker out of the kitchen when she'd manage to open the door and slide in and try to steal the eggplants out of the pan... i skimmed through the sections on Bali and Padang... which i found out a few new facts... like the fact that the word "PADANG" means "field"... i read about the Minang culture, which i already knew a bit about having spent some time there... and then i got to the Mentawais section and when i got to the section on religion and spirituality, it literally
BLEW
MY
MIND

here is what it said:

"the native Subulungan religion is a form of animism, involving the worship of nature spirits and a belief in the existence of ghosts, as well as the soul. The chief nature spirits are those of the sky, sea, jungle and earth. There are also two river spirits: Ina Oinan (Mother of Rivers) is beneficent, while Kameinan (Father's Sister) is regarded as evil. Apart from these nature spirits, all inanimate objects have spirits (kina/roh) that give them life. Although the sky spirits are considered the most influential, there is no hierarchy among spirits.

The worship of the soul is of utmost importance, being vital to good health and longevity. The soul is believed to depart the body at various times during life before its ultimate escape at death. Sickness, for example, is the result of the temporary absence of the soul from the body; dreams also signify that the soul is "on vacation".

When the soul leaves the body at death it is transformed into a ghost (sanitu/hantu). Mentawaians try to avoid these ghosts, whom they suspect of malevolently attempting to rob the living of their souls. To protect themselves, they place fetish sticks at every entrance to the village. This tactic is considered foolproof, provided no-one has committed a ritual sin or broken a taboo."

Immediately i started thinking about the other day when i got really sick out of the blue and had to sleep for a good 24 hours straight. i was DOWN for the count and felt super feverish and delirious and out of it... and just kept sleeping and sleeping until Yona came to me and brought me this coconut obat -her Mentawai secret herbal healing medicine... and i felt better the next morning.

I slid open the heavy kitchen door and went to sit behind the bar (my new favorite zone these days) - to help her bartend and to show her this entry in the book and get her take on Sibulunganism.

We have gotten really deep in conversation before, but now we sat there and got like WHOLE other level deep... Animism!?
what is this?
it sounds like everything i believe in, and yet i don't know anything about it.
Leaving your body when you are sick?

Yona told me the other day when i was sick she asked my spirit where it was... if a bad spirit was using it, or if it was good... and she said i told her my spirit needed to leave my body for a day... i needed to "jalan jalan saja"... she said i needed to go back to california for a day... i needed to go connect with some friends and family... so my spirit left, and my body collapsed and got sick... but she brought me the medicine to bring me back...

It rung so true and so obvious that this is EXACTLY what happened.

SO then i decided to read about Animism.

As i wikipedia searched and read around about Animism, the only thing that didnt ring fully in my heart was the separation i seemed to read... i see all as one...
"The All" - as the Kybalion and Hermetic teachings would call it.
Then i got to the end and found a little sentence about Pantheism which is close to Animism, but Patheists believe that there is not separation between cosmos and earth, spirit and body... it is one.

OH MY GOD.

my reilgion!
this is what i believe!

So... I guess that makes me a Pantheist.

i clicked on Pantheism and found the most shell shocking image (no pun intended)
The Nautilis shell (which is ALL over this island... in the tides, on the beach, lamps made out of them....)... it is the symbol for pantheism.

Right there on Wikipedia, dancing next to a picture of the galaxy...
drawing these paralells that only i draw (or so i thought)... seeing the symbolism in everything and recognizing the unity between body and soul, nature and God... it's all ONE.

I sat on the couch after dinner looking at the Pantheism site with John E and Ainsley and showing them the Nautilus symbol and marvelling at the philosophy...
and also talking about Jamie, my ex-husband.
I showed JohnE pictures of Jamie and talked a lot about how amazing he is, and how very different we were and are and why i think it didn't work out.
But Jamie always had my back in my quest to find my religion... standing by me as i flew through the cosmos drawing parallels and using arguments like "well whatever... we're all one anyways... so who cares?"

I called my parents after everyone went to bed.
it was early morning in San Diego and my mom picked up the phone and said she had literally JUST woken up from a dream about me and jamie.
Jamie had been playing in a band, and i was so excited i was jumping up on stage and stealing the microphone from the singers.

I told them not only about finding Pantheism and all the magic that was going on.. but about how i had gotten sick... and then gotten better so quickly.
How Yona had helped me and about how dreams were the same thing as this leaving the body and then coming back to it.
and how ironic that i had been sitting on the couch talking about jamie while my mother was dreaming of jamie and i on a stage together.

My parents understand. they get me... probably because they made me.
i am a direct result of their love.
and they are SO full of love... no wonder i am like a bubbling over bathtub of love and energy right now.

After i got off the phone with them, i looked through a tree and saw the glow of the moon.
It was a little cloudy so it was just an orange-ish glow in a semi circle.
and then of course, i burst into tears to see the magic before my eyes.
... the branches of the tree that were in front of the semi-circle of light, drew the exact Nautilis shell design on top of the light.

there it was.
illuminated.

for me.

i can't explain all of this... other then the fact that i am right where i am supposed to be... learning all of this for a reason. and i am so blown away by the majesty of it all.
inching closer and closer to cosmic consciousness and inner connectedness through our dreams as we spiral through the galaxy.


---

this morning i received an email from jamie.
no surprise whatsoever.

BISIKAN KALBU

...that's the word for "intuition" in bahasa indonesia
"bisikan kalbu"

bisikan means "to whisper"
kalbu means "heart"

so, here, in this place of wonder... intuition is the whispering of the heart...

i found out this definition tonight after watching the giant red sun descend behind the horizon. we saw that flash of green across the ocean when the last bit of sun disapeared. i don't know if i've ever really seen the famous green flash in a really big way... but i definitely saw a small one tonight.
my eyes were stinging from staring out and forcing myself not to blink.
everything adjacent to the descending ball of fire engine red (including our faces) was painted the color of fire light.
our guests were still out surfing down the way at seven palms, so it was just the family sitting on the porch...
this moment made me SO happy.
i told john so smile, because i was taking a mental snapshot of the moment, since i don't have a camera anymore.

Beaker, my little monkey sister love, was still down at worker housing, where i left her earlier.

This evening i went for a run behind worker housing - which consists of running barefoot, back and forth on a soft piece of sand where the tide doesn't wash up too much coral.


My friend Tony and I decided to be team lari-lari and run every evening... but this evening (our decided first day) he was still in Tua Pajet with John, so i went it alone.
Within about a half hour John and Tony pulled up in the boat and i was sitting on that aforementioned soft white sand, inspecting the shells i had stopped to collect. I was deep in thought about how hermit crabs were basically squatters and opportunists the way they abandoned their old house for a bigger better one whenever there was a vacancy in the crabitat.

WHY am i always drawing parallels with hermit crabs? but actually... why do i do this with everything?



earlier in the day i got back from paddling around the island and found myself sitting on the back porch gazing out towards the jungle - losing myself in a daydream... remembering things i hadn't thought about in a long time.
i found myself thinking a lot about Susan... my friend and old boss who started yogitoes and inspired the shit out of me during the four years that i worked for her.
i wrote her a letter today... let all my thoughts flow out of me train of thought and ended up writing to her about surfing...
in it i wrote
--------------

"...Sometimes i get to pondering and thinking about what happened... how everything broke open in my life and it was time to leave jamie and intentionally lose everything as i let go of my grip... and leave that life that was so ideal it was almost too perfect. too easy. too wonderful. and somehow i let go.

I have been trying to actually get into surfing since i've been here and keep quitting... surrendering to being the photographer instead... and then as soon as i forget why i quit, i go out again and then quickly remember and quit again.
I think i actually just don't really like it very much.
it's just not something i enjoy doing
But i LOVE the symbolism in it...
i LOVE the waves and the energy and the poetry in the art of surfing... i just prefer not to actually catch waves. ha.
i am the non-surfing surfer. the unsurfer.

but last week we had some really amazing surfer girls from hawaii stay here and i got to know them well... teaching them yoga and going out to take photos and sit in the lineup as a social event...
One of the girls in a surf instructor on Maui and finally on the second to last day insisted that she help me.
so i obliged... only to have my usual panic attack when paddling back in...
that's the part i hate, i realized... paddling against the huge breaking waves... duck diving them and getting pulled back towards land when i am just trying to get back out behind the wave...
she said so calmly and knowingly.
"I understand you... and i know why surfing appeals to you so much and at the same time why you hate it. it's because all you want to do is "go with the flow"... and when you're on a wave, you are riding the fastest, most amazing flow ever... you are in sync with the most powerful energy on earth... and then when you fall off or are trying to get back... you have to go SO hard against the current. it's exactly the opposite of who you are."

WHOA.

that was it. she nailed it.

i know i am a super passionate, strong person... i am a blazing fire sometimes, like the bursts of flames on the playa... but i feel like i had no direction particularly before i met you... although i don't mean to say i wasn't strong or dynamic, because i feel i've been that way since birth... i have always blazed... and have known how to shoot up in the air 70 feet and everyone goes "WHAAOOO!"
but i think, most of my life, i didn't know what to do with this energy, this power to burn... and i really feel as though you taught me (maybe intentionally, or maybe just by example, by being you)... how to allow my divine light, candle flame to stay lit, instead of surging on and off... and to let the wind carry me... to go with the flow...
and i think ultimately that's what happened...

i learned to listen to my inner voice, my teacher and my inner child me and i heard the rest of the world calling me to travel it and let my flame spread with the wind... surrendering to the direction it went.

anyways - i hope all this makes some sort of sense...

...

i love you so much.

thank you for guiding me always... even today... on the other side of the world... because you are in my heart eternally, helping me navigate my path, by gently reminding me to FLOW...

----------------



after i wrote this, i sat in the garden, thought about what i wanted to plant.... then i came in and helped yona by working behind the bar for a few hours while she rested... i went for that pseudo run (collecting shells), watched the sunset and then found myself back behind the bar with yona learning the word for intuition...
bisikan kalbu
the whispering of the heart...

my heart had been whispering to me all day.

sometimes when i am teaching yoga, i talk about two minds... the thinking mind & the feeling mind.

the thinking mind (at least for me) is loud and can be highly obnoxious... yelling the same thing over and over again... beating a dead horse with repetitive destructive thoughts or fixations.

then, there is the feeling mind.... it's quiet... the voice of the feeling mind gets drown out by the loud thinking mind that bellows above it. the feeling mind is like a whispering of the heart.

then, something crazy & synchronistic happened.

i decided to pull an angel card... and i pulled this:

CLAIRAUDIENCE
the message said
"you are hearing true Divine guidance very clearly. It comes in the form of repetitious messages, urging you to improve a situation for yourself or others. Pay close attention to everything you hear in your mind and with your physical ears. Divine directives are repetitious, loving, and to the point."

My soul brother, David Block skyped me earlier and he told me about his website "humanexperiencecreations.com" i opened it up and saw a quote on the top of the bio page that said
"David’s music is the soundtrack to my soul.” – Zan Roberts"

it's true.

i realized that i need t o be listening to my music, and sitting in meditation more often.

it's easy to get pulled into the flow of a community or family... especially when they are badasses and you love them and the way they think... but i know that i need my ME time.

my i-thing broke, so i can't go sit on the beach and listen to my music, and i can't cart around my laptop... mostly because the monkey will eat off more of the keys if i leave it open... or it will probably get destroyed... so i think i am going to make my bedtime this "ME time" where i will listen to the music of my soul... my friends and family who's music moves my heart... and close my eyes and listen to that quiet feeling voice to guide me. the whispering of my heart.